Police charged Marcus Velasquez, 14, with criminal homicide and other charges in Saturday's shooting of Kayla Peterson, 22, in Beaver Falls. Police also charged Todavia Cleckley, 14, and Kyle Goosby Jr., 13, with conspirary in the case, and took Goosby into custody Monday. Peterson was shot at a house about 3:30 p.m. and died in a Pittsburgh hospital two hours later.

Todavia Cleckley, 14, was charged with conspiracy in Saturday's shooting of Kayla Peterson, 22, in Beaver Falls. Police charged Marcus Velasquez, 14, with criminal homicide and other charges and also charged Kyle Goosby Jr., 13, with conspirary in the case, and took Goosby into custody Monday. Peterson was shot at a house about 3:30 p.m. and died in a Pittsburgh hospital two hours later.

We are currently undergoing updates to our site and are working to improve your experience on all devices that you use throughout your day. If you should find a page or a story that is not working correctly, please click here.

Thank you for your patience,

TribLIVE.com Team

William Bailey watched his fiancee drift toward death in the moments after he says a teenager fatally shot her over a request to bum a cigarette.

“She had this look of peace in her eyes and it scared me to death,” Bailey, 28, said two days after paramedics loaded Kayla Peterson, 22, of Beaver Falls into an ambulance outside the home they shared on 13th Street. “I'm still in shock. I'm still expecting her to come through the door.”

Police on Monday were searching for two of the three Beaver Falls teens they say are responsible for killing Peterson, the mother of a 1-year-old girl. They charged Marcus Velasquez, 14, with homicide and other crimes in connection with the shooting, and Todavia Cleckley, 14, and Kyle Goosby Jr., 13, with conspiracy.

They arrested Goosby on Monday. Beaver County District Attorney Anthony Berosh said he intends to prosecute them as adults.

Attorney Michael Santicola is representing Goosby and said his client has never been in trouble, but in the past fought with the two other suspects.

“He is a 13-year-old boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Santicola said. “He's been caught up in this thing.”

Relatives at Cleckley's home declined comment. No one answered the door at the Velasquez' home on Seventh Avenue.

Bailey said he didn't know any of the teens but knows their families.

“Family members have come to the house to apologize and give condolences,” Bailey said.

He said he bought cigarettes at J's News about 3:30 p.m. Saturday when three teens asked him for one and began following him.

“I didn't acknowledge them, I didn't look at them, I pretended I didn't hear them,” Bailey said. He walked the two blocks back to his house while they followed and shouted at him.

Peterson came out of the house and yelled at the teens to get a job and stop trying to bum cigarettes, Bailey said.

Police said it was Velasquez who pulled a gun out of his waistband and fired, striking Peterson.

“She said, ‘I can't feel my legs,' ” Bailey said. He helped her to the ground. “She told me she loved me and to love the baby for her.”

Peterson died about two hours later at Allegheny General Hospital. A witness saw Velasquez pull the gun, and Cleckley ran away with him after the shooting, police said. They used surveillance video to identify Goosby as the third teen involved.

“You never think someone is going to pull out a gun and shoot you. Especially not a 14-year-old,” said Peterson's stepfather, Wesley Chapman, 50, of New Sewickley.

Facebook photos on a profile under Cleckley's name show a young man posing with guns. Beaver Falls police Chief Charles Jones said he didn't know who was in the photos but that detectives used Facebook as part of their investigation.

“We're using every means available to us to investigate,” Jones said.

Duquesne law professor Wes Oliver said it is becoming increasingly common for young people to post evidence of criminal behavior on social media.

“There really is a more voyeuristic culture now among criminals, who really celebrate their crimes by putting pictures and even videos on Facebook,” Oliver said.

On his Facebook page, Cleckley says he “attended” Beaver Falls Area Senior High School. Santicola said Goosby is a student at Beaver Falls Middle School.

Big Beaver Falls Area School District Superintendent Donna Nugent issued a statement Monday saying two of the three suspects have not been “part of the student body or within the district's school buildings for over a year.” Nugent wouldn't specify which suspects. She said a letter to parents notified them about the incident and said counselors were available for students. She declined further comment.

Criminal justice experts say it's becoming more common for authorities to charge younger people with violent crimes such as homicide.

“I think the reason we see more of these cases brought against younger offenders has more to do with decisions by prosecutors to try these cases in adult court than it does an increase in the numbers,” said John Burkoff, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “That's not to say it's wrong. I do think there certainly has been increasing sentiment to take the more serious and horrific cases into adult court whatever the age of the offender.”

Oliver pointed to the case of Wampum resident Jordan Brown, who was 11 when state police charged him as an adult with killing his father's pregnant fiancee and her unborn child.

A judge later moved Brown's case to juvenile court. Brown, now 15, was found delinquent and ordered held in juvenile detention until as long as his 21st birthday.

“There is a perception that there is a real problem with juvenile violence out there,” Oliver said. “That perception, whether it's true or not, is causing people to demand longer sentences for juveniles.”

Bailey, who planned to marry Peterson this summer, said she was devoted to their daughter, Elieonna, 1.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.